A little help for a rookie

Hey, I'm new to the animation front. I'm using 3dsmax 6 and when I attempted to make add some bones to a character I made, things went wrong and I was wondering if you could help me with the following problems. Just in case you need more information, I made an upper body for my character out of one shape and then two seperate shapes for the legs. Here were the probelsm I encountered:
-Upon creation, the bones horribly deformed the object they were skinned to.
-The envelope settings stopped working at some point while i was making the model.
-The bones formed lumps in the shape they were skinned to whenever I moved the bones.
I would really appreciate it if you could help me out. I am in awe of the animating skill on this board. Thanks!